Quick Homebrew + miniconda python environment specification and REPL kernel creation: guide + scripts

[CEBangu]

Having a hard time getting Zed to find the right conda environment? Have (mini)conda installed with homebrew? Want a quick way of telling Zed which conda env to use, and to create a REPL kernel for a new env? Hopefully these scripts can help.

In order for Zed to use the right conda environment, you need to specify it in a pyrightconfig.json file in your root directory. This is tedious and cumbersome given you need to do this for every new project (and sometimes switch mid project). Script 1 deals with this. Moreover, REPL is great, but you need to initialize a new kernel for every environment. Script 2 deals with this. NB! What follows is written for a Zsh shell.

1. make_pyrightconfig.sh

This script creates a pyrightconfig.json in your current directory. It takes one argument which is the name of the environment you want to use in this directory. You will need to specify the path, which can be found using the command: conda env list, and taking the output before the /env name.

In the terminal, in a nice directory (perhaps home), run nano make_pyrightconfig.sh. Then paste the following code:

#!/bin/zsh

# Check if an argument was provided
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "You must provide a virtual environment name."
  exit 1
fi

# Set the virtual environment name
VENV_NAME=$1

# Create the JSON content
JSON_CONTENT=$(cat <<EOF
{
  "venvPath": "/opt/homebrew/Caskroom/miniconda/base/envs",
  "venv": "$VENV_NAME"
}
EOF
)

# Write to pyrightconfig.json in the current directory
echo "$JSON_CONTENT" > pyrightconfig.json

# Output success message
echo "pyrightconfig.json created with venv set to $VENV_NAME."

Where the path passed to venvPath is the one given by the conda env list command as specified above.

To make this work, it must be an executable. So after saving the file, run:

chmod +x make_pyrightconfig.sh

Afterwards, running ./make_pyrightconfig.sh my_env in the terminal will make this file in your current directory, specifying me_env as the conda env to use. Here, and throughout, my_env should be replaced with whatever your environment name is.

To make this process even better, you can add an alias.
Run nano ~/.zshrc
then, somewhere in there add: alias convenient_alias_name="~/path/to/your/make_pyrightconfig.sh", where 'convenient_alias_name' is the string you want to assign the script command to. Then save the file, and apply the changes by running source ~/.zshrc

FWIW mine is 'mpc', so when I run mpc env_name in my terminal, it creates the pyrightconfig.json file that points Zed to the env_name environment.

NB! you can use this same command to change the environment in the pyrightconfig - it will just overwrite the file.

2. create_kernel.sh

This script takes the env_name you want to create the REPL kernel for and installs the packages required via conda. The idea is the same. First make the create_kernel.sh in a nice directory, and paste

#!/bin/zsh

# Check if an argument was provided
if [ -z "$1" ]; then
  echo "You must provide the environment name."
  exit 1
fi

# Set the environment name
ENV_NAME=$1

# Initialize conda for this shell session
eval "$(conda shell.zsh hook)"

# Activate the environment
conda activate "$ENV_NAME"

# Install ipykernel in the activated environment
conda install -y ipykernel

# Install the Jupyter kernel for this environment
python -m ipykernel install --user --name "$ENV_NAME" --display-name "Python ($ENV_NAME)"

# Output success message
echo "Kernel for environment '$ENV_NAME' created successfully."

then chmod +x create_kernel.sh and ./create_kernel my_env will create the REPL kernel for my_env.

The alias trick also works for this. You need to follow all the steps, including the application command.

3. Possible failure points

• Followed all the steps and it doesn't work? Try restarting Zed.
• This is written for a Zsh shell. I suppose it could be adapted to Bash but I haven't done that.
• Paths are important. Your conda installation may be different. Generally conda env list should provide guidance here.
• The create_kernel script might have a hard time initializing conda depending on the install. Just give ChatGPT the error and it will probably figure out what to do.
• Conda without Homebrew? I guess this might work in that case as well, but I haven't tested it so who knows.

If there is another way to do this, please leave it in the comments. The other way I've found is to manually create the pyrightconfig file and there is no way I am doing that. And apologies if this solution has already been implemented in a different post - I couldn't find it.

Also, this was written by a novice for novices. I appreciate this might be trivial, but compared to VScode this was a real pain...